Deloitte published a paper on “Asset management in a post-crisis environment”. With the financial upheaval of 2008, many asset managers have spent the last 8 years regrouping. With the market steadily improving, firms can once again focus on profitability. And marketing’s role in the profitable growth is central.
Below are 6 changes in asset management, and how marketing is rising to the challenge to address those issues and becoming the firm’s most valuable asset.
- Technology is playing a greater role in firms. By 2020, technology will become mission critical to drive customer engagement, data mining for information on clients and potential clients, operational efficiency and regulatory and tax reporting. By 2020 most global asset managers will have a chief digital officer (CDO). Technology is also playing a greater role in marketing efforts. Technology now allows asset management firms to better understand internal and external engagement, analyze potential opportunity, and make fact-based decisions on where to invest with communication efforts.
- Power is shifting away from asset managers to distributors. Distributors now own and influence the customer relationship. This places added pressure on the asset manager to forge a strong relationship with the distributor. By initiating advocacy programs and distributor newsletters containing trends and market updates, asset managers are working towards stronger relationships.
- Asset offerings are becoming more complex. The most successful managers in every region are either specialists or traditional providers who have become “ambidextrous”—that is, they have maintained their active core-asset businesses while also developing capabilities to capture new faster-growth assets. Today, marketing now has the power to develop targeted communications tailored to an array of audiences and product segments. And because these communications can be triggered by an individual’s defined interest and digital body language, the content is still very much personalized.
- Demographics are changing, and so must communication strategies. A rapidly aging population, a bulging youth population, and changing roles of women are all impacting asset management opportunity. It’s necessary for asset management firms to implement a multichannel marketing approach to their communications. Because generations consume information differently, content and accessibility must be managed across print, phone, in-person, web, social, mobile, and email. Marketers in asset management are launching these multichannel programs and developing a universal profile and understanding of their clients.
- There’s a perpetual increase in regulation. New regulation will mean increased capital requirements, leverage limits, new disclosure requirements and changes to remuneration. Marketing technology today meets these strict requirements. Wholesalers and institutional sales have the ability to launch targeted measurable campaigns using pre-approved content while meeting compliance requirements. Firms also retain a copy of every communication saved and archived for audit purposes, all email communications are sent via branded Internet Protocols, and there’s a centralized audit trail for reporting of ‘who, what, when’.
- Talent acquisition is becoming more competitive. Proactive asset management firms will actively acquire talent and ‘lock up’ investment staff in advance of significant asset gathering activities. Firms are challenged with communicating who the firm is, why they’re different, why the investors would want to work there, what the firm benefits are, and how candidates can learn more about joining. There are 9 ways marketers are aiding in recruitment efforts.
How do you see marketing’s contribution to profitability evolving?